A portion of the house at 198 Joseph St. in Horseheads was all that remained by midday Jan. 26. 2011 after a morning explosion destroyed the home. / FILE PHOTO

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Key points of Joseph Street home explosion

• An FBI examiner says a pipe near the house fractured due to stress corrosion cracking, which requires source of stress, exposure to corrosive environment and time for the failure. • The FBI examiner observed that insulation on the pipe, which would have protected the pipe from corrosion, was missing or degraded near the break. • NYSEG says it has found “third-party damage” to pipes near the home. • Survivors have sued NYSEG, town and village of Horseheads and Chemung County. And, each of the co-defendants has filed cross-claims, or suits, against each of the other co-defendants.

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An FBI analysis of a section of pipe taken from near the Horseheads house that exploded two years ago could lead to an explanation of how the house exploded and may shed light on conditions of aging natural gas pipes in the Northeast.

To date, there’s no official determination on the cause or origin of the Jan. 26, 2011 explosion and fire at 198 Joseph St. in Horseheads that took the life of a 15-month-old child, in part because of a lengthy criminal investigation. The FBI document, obtained by this newspaper under state Freedom of Information Law, shows that a section of natural gas pipe taken as evidence from near the home had broken underground.

Natural gas pipes in the Northeast are getting old, said Nathan Phillips, an earth and environment professor at Boston University, who has studied leaks in natural gas pipes in Boston.

“It’s aging infrastructure, just like our bridges and roads ... but it’s underground, and that makes it easier to ignore, because we don’t see it. We’re bearing costs by not fixing it.”

New York State Electric & Gas Corp. spokesman Clayton Ellis said the company has found “third-party damage” to its pipes near the Joseph Street home, and that most natural gas incidents in America are caused by damage inflicted by third parties. Ellis would not comment about the FBI’s finding because the house explosion is the subject of numerous lawsuits.

The explosion and ensuing fire killed 15-month old Benjamin Reed and burned his mother, Samantha Stratton, and his grandfather, Marvin “Butch” Hollister. Stratton, Hollister and Reed’s father, Andy Reed, have filed suit against NYSEG, Chemung County, the Village of Horseheads and the Town of Horseheads, alleging negligence by each. NYSEG has filed cross claims against the county, village and town, alleging that the municipalities damaged the pipes, and all of the other co-defendants have filed cross-claims against the other co-defendants.

The Horseheads explosion hasn’t yet been attributed to any cause, because investigations into the incident haven’t been finished.

The FBI’s findings about the pipe are being used in an ongoing investigation into the fatal explosion by the Chemung County Sheriff’s Office. Elmira Heights Fire Chief James Locker said he is awaiting that investigation and an investigation by the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control before making his department’s report on the incident final.

Randy Shadic, deputy chief of the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control’s investigative unit, said the state’s investigation is complete but won’t be released because the case is under the jurisdiction of the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The state Public Service Commission also investigated the incident; it is unclear if that investigation is still ongoing. This newspaper has requested copies of certain records from the investigation under state Freedom of Information Law.

FBI examination

The Chemung County Sheriff’s Office, in 2011, sent sections of gas pipes that serviced homes, taken from underground near the Hollister home, to the FBI laboratory division in Quantico, Va., asking for the items to be examined.

The pipes were examined by the laboratory division’s trace evidence, nuclear DNA, latent print operations, chemistry and firearms/toolmarks units. Each examiner wrote a report describing the findings.

One examiner determined that one of the pipes had failed because of a phenomenon called “stress corrosion cracking.”

“Stress corrosion cracking is an insidious mechanism of failure,” Susan Kazanjian, an examiner in the FBI’s chemistry unit, wrote in her findings about the broken pipe. “Cracks generated in such a manner often remain tightly closed and are not visually detectable until structural integrity is compromised enough to cause complete failure.

“It is essential that metallic components under stress be protected from the corrosive environments in which they are susceptible to SCC,” Kazanjian wrote, noting that acidic soil is corrosive to the kind of pipe taken from the home.

Chemung County soil is generally acidic, said Jabe Warren, a community educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chemung County.

While not commenting on the Horseheads incident specifically, because he was unfamiliar with the particulars, Tony Ingraffea, an engineering professor at Cornell University, said that, generally, stress corrosion cracking would be unusual in the kind of pipe tested by the FBI.

“Stress corrosion cracking is usually associated with relatively high stresses, and as such are not usual in distribution lines,” (which are small-diameter pipes that transport natural gas to customers), Ingraffea said.

Kazanjian wrote that stress corrosion cracking requires a source of stress, a corrosive environment and time for the crack to penetrate until it becomes a more obvious break. That section of 1-inch carbon steel pipe was permanently bowed, indicating it was under bending stress that put the pipe under tension, she said, noting that sources of corrosion for carbon steel include humid air or acidic soil.

The pipe was mostly covered in insulation, but in the area of the fracture, the insulation is missing, Kazanjian wrote. The areas of insulation next to the uninsulated part showed degraded edges, and the uninsulated part of the pipe was severely corroded, she found.

Kazanjian said the pipe section showed three modes of fracture, but she couldn’t determine the amount of time required to initiate the crack or how long the crack lasted until the pipe failed.

Pressure-testing the pipe, she found leaks in it under the area of degraded insulation. She also said that when the FBI received that section of pipe, it had been taped over with 2-inch-wide polyethylene tape, which another chemistry unit examiner wrote was designed for use on underground oil and natural gas lines and has been used for more than 60 years.

Residue on the pipe showed the tape was put there after the insulation had degraded, Kazanjian wrote in her report. “It is not generally a good practice to cover pipe that has started corroding with tape,” she wrote. “The tape can trap contaminants and does not block moisture.”

The FBI reports make no determination about who might have put the tape on the pipe. An examiner in the latent print operations unit found no fingerprints; an examiner in the trace evidence unit found no hair or fibers.

An examiner in the nuclear DNA unit said there is some male DNA on the tape, but the results of the DNA typing procedure from that tape can’t be used for matching purposes because there wasn’t enough genetic material on the tape. The results can, however, be used for ruling people out, the examiner wrote.

Odorless danger?

In an April 2012 filing in one of the lawsuits, attorney Jacob Welch of Corning, who represents Stratton, mentioned a way that gas leaking from underground can get into a home, without the characteristic foul odor that the public uses to identify it as a danger.

Welch was writing about information he sought from NYSEG about soil tests they, or someone representing them, conducted after the explosion. A neighbor had indicated that the test revealed high levels of gas in his yard.

The neighbor’s information suggests gas was leaking underground for some time, Welch wrote in the filing.

“To explain, in winter months, frost keeps natural gas from rising through the soil where it harmlessly escapes into the atmosphere,” Welch wrote. Gas that can’t escape permeates the soil sideways and follows paths of least resistance, he wrote.

Ingraffea, the Cornell professor, said it’s plausible for leaking gas to move along a path of least resistance when it meets less permeable frozen ground.

“One of the most common paths of least resistance is buried utility lines where dirt has been dug up,” Welch wrote. “The gas follows such lines until it enters into homes from areas around the outside of lines.”

As the gas moves through soil, the odor that the public associates with natural gas gets scrubbed away by the soil, Welch wrote.

The Payson, Ariz., fire department, in a safety publication about butane gas that it published after responding to a home explosion there, said there are a number of reasons why people wouldn’t be able to smell the gas.

“It is very possible for the foul smelling odorant mercaptan to be scrubbed from the gas by the soil as the gas perked from the ground ...” the fire department said.

Other people, especially the elderly, just can’t smell it, and conditions such as colds, sinus congestion, allergies and the use of tobacco, alcohol or drugs can diminish the sense of smell, the fire department said.

What can be done?

Phillips’ research into natural gas leaks in Boston was published in the February 2013 Environmental Pollution journal. He and his team found 3,356 leaks in the city.

Phillips on Tuesday described the network of distribution pipes in the Northeast as “a hodge-podge of new and old pipes. ... It’s not uncommon in our old cities to have many miles of pipe that are up to 100, or even older than 100 years old,” he said.

Most gas leaks on distribution pipes happen where the pipes are joined, Phillips said.

“A Band-Aid solution is to patch the leaks at the point of the leak,” Phillips said. “The real solution is pipe replacement, rather than just patching. And that requires money, and it’s a serious question that everyone has to consider from the utilities and the shareholders to the rate-payers, how’s that going to be fixed?”

In the days after the explosion, as U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, spoke in his first town meeting in Big Flats, he said he wanted to see more federal spending on infrastructure, including water, sewer and natural gas pipes.

Reed said the pipes were “crumbling under our feet” and “falling apart.”

This newspaper, on Jan. 11 of this year, contacted the state Public Service Commission, asking what laws or regulations are in place that address the problem of stress corrosion cracking, among other questions. A spokesperson for the commission acknowledged receipt of the questions but has not yet provided answers.

Natural gas utilities, such as NYSEG, are required by the state to survey gas pipes every three to five years for leaks, Ellis said. The company also supports and promotes the Dig Safely New York program, which requires excavators to call 811 two working days before digging, so underground facilities can be marked.

The company urges anyone who smells natural gas or suspects a natural gas leak to contact them immediately at (800) 572-1121.